Comments

He was in the BB getting than 2:1, he could be calling with QTo. On the flop he was floating because the PFR will bet on this flop almost 100% of the time so the caller didn’t have to have a heart draw. Still, I don’t think it was enough reason to fold. But like Doug said, he folded out of fear.

Right or wrong (given Polk's great assessment) the decision came down to the steep MTT payouts. The two big stacks are incentivized to not get into big pots because chips won not as valuable as chips lost.

When they are both aware of the danger of getting it in big stack vs big stack, the set of Kings assessed that there needed to be a very strong hand to bet.

Polk's video is far more detailed and makes the argument that KK vs range is a call, even if today it happened to be a correct hero fold.

I think I can ever fold here. 1 combo of slow played AA and 1 combo of QhTh, maybe 1 more combo of QsTs for bdfd. Still optimistic float oop.

what you might not know is that Joe is a super nit. So much so that he's never shoving here with 77, 55 or KJ.... "playing the player"... there are just some guys here that have ZERO bluffs. And since Joe has no bluffs in his range, we have to consider what he thinks is the nuts and do we beat that. Because we can have AA, AK & KK in our range - his shove makes it more likely that he's got QT.
Since Ian didnt' bet the turn - the QT doesn't necessary have to be suited to the hearts.

Polk's analysis is pretty spot on... against a balanced player like Soto or Berkey, it's a call. But against Joe... a fold seems totally fine.

The problem with stopping at this analysis is that it doesn't account for how assumptive your ranging process usually has to be, especially if you confidently end at 1 combo. He could be floating us wide with all QTo if his paradigm is different than ours. Maybe he has AA at some 0.6% frequency. Just understanding that your ranging will never be concrete enough will lead you down a better path.

What's most relevant and important is to break down what people are actually capable of in this line, if an unknown pulls the trigger on this large of a bluff. Polk seems to be arguing that we can't fold due to not blocking potential bluffs, and generally basing too many spots like it off of fear alone.

His vision is narrow though. How often are people actually bluff raising rivers? There is actual research you can do once you accumulate enough online hands to have clairvoyance over what the player pool does in similar enough spots. I have information at my disposal that says river raises are significantly underbluffed in every player pool, and it's been inconclusive that there are even general player profiles we'd have a call against. What that amounts to is that we cannot call without a laser sharp aggro fish read, or enough value domination.

If he does indeed have 1 or 2 combos of 77, we may end up being forced to call. But, it's already assumptive to think people will be raising river with 77 with the in-game final table dynamics at play, and Joe's tendency to not be a recreational player doing crazy shit. I could say though that the ICM forces us to fold, even if he does have 3 combos of 77 here, but that would be a guess since I don't study ICM.